We Two Boys Together Clinging by David Hockney

Two boys Kissing by David Levithan is not a book about boys kissing. Well, it is, but it’s about so much more like the lost wisdom of the generation before us who lived (and died) through the AIDS crisis. And the pain and self-hatred young LGBTQ+ people cope with every day, sometimes by themselves. And about the uncertainty of love whose tireless seas demand everything and sometimes give nothing back. And it’s about standing firm in who we are. 

Two Boys Kissing has been a novel of contention in the public eye. Libraries want it banned. Conservatives claim it is pornographic. When I heard these things, I immediately decided this was a book I needed to read now. And I’m glad I did. Not because I could relate to the pain and the suffering the gay characters experienced (which I did). And not because it gave me a good, ugly cry at the end (it did that too). But because this novel is a crucial contribution for it connects the current generations to the wisdom of LGBTQ+ history, and this is a vital thing. When we forget our history, we become unmoored and drift dangerously on the uncertain tides of social narratives and political agendas. 

Two boys Kissing features Harry and Craig, two boys no longer dating but committed to breaking the most extended kiss registered in the Guinness World Records. The rules? Kiss for at least thirty-two hours, twelve minutes, and ten seconds. Their lips must touch the entire time—no bathroom breaks. Food and water have to be consumed while kissing. And it must be recorded for proof. 

While that marathon is taking place, we meet other characters like Avery, a trans boy, on a date with Ryan for the first time. He has to push past his fear and rejection to get that far. Neil and Peter are two boys dating but struggling because Neil’s parents won’t acknowledge that he is gay. Cooper is a gay teenager who has fled from his home and family because he’s dying from loneliness and rejection. He engages in risky sexual behavior, leaving him feeling more empty. And then there are the dead, the victims of the AIDS crisis, who narrate the story as a collective “we.” Their voices made me weep. They see what is happening to the characters and desperately wish to intervene but cannot. They want to offer wisdom, but they can no longer be heard. “He is on the verge of finding that very hard truth—that it [life] will never be complete, or feel complete. This is something you only have to learn once—that just like there is no such thing as forever, there is no such thing as total.”

At one crises point in Cooper’s life, the dead say:

Listen to us. We fruitlessly demand that you listen to us. We shit blood and had our skin lacerated and broken by lesions. We had fungus grow in our throats, under our fingernails. We lost the ability to see, to speak, to feed ourselves. We coughed up pieces of ourselves and felt our blood turn to magma. We lost the use of our muscles and our bodies were reduced to collections of skin-encased bones. We were rendered unrecognizable, diminished and demolished. Our lovers had to watch us die. Our friends had to watch as the nurse changed our catheters, had to try to put aside that image as they laid us in caskets, into the ground. We will never kiss our mothers again. We will never see our fathers. We will never feel air in our lungs. We will never hear the sound of our voices. We will never feel snow or sand or take part in another conversation. Everything was taken away from us, and we miss it. We miss all of it. Even if you cannot feel it now, it is all there for you.

Can you hear them speaking to us? I can. Are you listening? I hope I do. 

Two Boys Kissing affirmed my identity, named my pain and enfolded it within the collective history of those who have carried the same burdens of shame, fear, and self-loathing long before me. Read this book. Tell everyone to read this book. And let the book banners go to hell. 

Permalink